Monthly Archives: June 2015
Scotland Loves Marriage Equality
Scotland Loves Marriage Equality
Since the nation’s marriage equality law went into effect last December, one in eight marriages have been for same-sex couples.
Trudy Ring
www.advocate.com/politics/marriage-equality/2015/06/11/scotland-loves-marriage-equality
ACLU Sues Virginia School Board Over Trans-Exclusionary Restroom Policy
ACLU Sues Virginia School Board Over Trans-Exclusionary Restroom Policy
The Gloucester County School Board’s requirement that trans students use only single-stall restrooms is unconstitutional, the ACLU argues.
Trudy Ring
Why Mike Huckabee Fails His Christian Duty By Mocking Transgender People
Why Mike Huckabee Fails His Christian Duty By Mocking Transgender People
How should Christians treat transgender people?
The answer seems obvious: With respect and love. Yet former governor Mike Huckabee, a favorite of Christian conservatives, took to mocking transgender people at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention as he criticized city ordinances that allow people to use public restrooms based on how they identify their gender.
The website Buzzfeed unearthed a video of the February comments in which the former Baptist minister quipped, “Now I wish that someone told me that when I was in high school that I could have felt like a woman when it came time to take showers in PE. I’m pretty sure that I would have found my feminine side and said, ‘Coach, I think I’d rather shower with the girls today.’” As the presumably Christian audience clapped and giggled, Huckabee said, “You’re laughing because it sounds so ridiculous, doesn’t it?”
Yes, it does. But not for the reason they think. What’s ridiculous — and sad — is that Huckabee, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, and his audience appear to believe that transgender people are perpetrating some sort of hoax so they can gain access to public restrooms or locker rooms. Or that they’ve chosen to identify with a particular gender on a whim. This disregards the actual lives of transgender people, some of whom (though not all) have described feeling trapped in the wrong body from a young age. What’s so funny about that?
Worse, the butt of this joke are people who are already too frequently marginalized by society. According to the Human Rights Campaign, transgender people are nearly four times more likely to have an annual household income of less than $10,000 and twice as likely to be unemployed compared with the general population. The 2011 National Transgender Discrimination Survey found that “78 percent of those who expressed a transgender identity or gender non-conformity while in grades K-12 reported harassment — harassment so severe it led 15 percent to leave school.”
The majority of the youth surveyed by HRC in 2014 reported they lacked a supportive family member to help them face the harassment and ostracizing at school.
One twentysomething transgender person told Religion News Service columnist Jonathan Merritt in 2013, that his growing up in the church was damaging. He felt he couldn’t talk to his parents or his pastor. Instead, the then-she, prayed God would help her become a boy.
Yet when Huckabee was asked about his cruel joke — a version of which he has told on a few occasions — he dismissed the query, saying, “Nobody ever asks me about it except the media. They’re the only ones who seem to be stirred up about it.” While attempting to indict journalists, Huckabee was in fact indicting those who surround him who he seems to be suggesting are indifferent to Christian unkindness toward transgender people.
Though Huckabee might believe that being transgender is sinful, that’s not a uniform position. Pat Robertson acknowledged in 2013 that “I think there are men who are in a woman’s body. It’s very rare, but it’s true. Or women that are in men’s bodies.” Robertson added, “I don’t think there’s any sin associated with” transitioning to the other gender.
The church should be the safest place in the world to discuss personal struggles. Huckabee could help make it so by saying two simple words: I’m sorry.
(Kirsten Powers writes weekly for USA TODAY and is author of the upcoming “The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech.”)
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Limit(less) Project: Odera
Nick Jonas Replaces Iggy Azalea at Pittsburgh Pride
Nick Jonas Replaces Iggy Azalea at Pittsburgh Pride
Jonas steps in to replace the controversial rapper, who’s been blasted for homophobic and racist tweets.
Gina Vivinetto
Photographer Nicholas Contrera Documents New York City's Genderqueer Scene
Photographer Nicholas Contrera Documents New York City's Genderqueer Scene
Self Portrait by Nicholas Contrera
Nicholas Contrera and I recently met for a beer on the patio of a queer dive bar in Brooklyn. Contrera is really a dream interviewee. Almost immediately after sitting down he started telling me about the projects he has in the works: a photo series capturing genderqueer night life personalities, and his spread in this year’s NYC Pride Guide. I just sat back, listened, and enjoyed hearing him talk about his photography. I think that passion comes across in this interview, and know it’s very present in his work.
Phillip Miner: Tell me about your collodion wet plate series.
Nicholas Contrera: I’m calling it either Tribe or Tribal — I think Tribal; I like the tone of that. The series is an aspect of myself in New York in the society — in the clique and the lifestyle — I live.
When I first got to New York, I read Patti Smith’s Just Kids. I was very into the ’80s New York and Paris Is Burning New York, and I tried to almost capture that New York, which doesn’t exist anymore. The photographs just didn’t work. I realized my work needed to be my New York. This is my New York. This is my time. This is when I look back when I’m older and say, “My time is the best.”
I’ve become friends with the club kids and the ladyboys, the kids who go out with beards and lipstick and have a genderbending look. I find them the bravest gays to go out, pushing past boundaries, breaks so many walls for all of the gay community.
PM: Tell me a little more about the people you’re photographing.
NC: I’m not just photographing the typical drag queen. I’m photographing the people around me. These are the people who surround me every night. In the nine months of doing this project, the work has changed me and my sexuality. I’m still a gay male, but it’s encouraged me to explore my feminine side. When I go out I give more femme. I push those boundaries. I can give more femininity and have these genderbending moments.
Similarly, I never wanted the work to just be restricted as a gay piece. I want my work to reach everyone. I want this work to appeal to the largest audience possible.
PM: Why did you choose this particular photography process?
NC: The process was made in the early 1900s for the lower working class. Tin was so cheap you could go and get a portrait of your family. What a lot of photographers would do is take this process to Africa or other countries and document the people who were living out there, the natives, and come back and show what they found.
I was talking to my mentor, and we realized this is what I’m doing. I’m going out there and photographing my tribe, which is really foreign to a lot of people. This is a tribe. New York nightlife, the New York gay scene — these are both tribes.
I fell in love with the collodion process and felt this would be a perfect medium to produce this series with. I love processes that get me dirty. I love that the photo happens once. The type of film I’m using limits me to 12 shots. With wet plate you photograph once and that’s the image. That’s how I view these people, when they go out and give these looks, mixing masculinity and femininity. For me those looks, those moments, are collectable. That’s what I capture in my photographs.
PM: That’s a great contrast to the selfie culture we have these days, where people take 30 pictures to get just the right angle so that they look perfect.
NC: You’ve got it. What I love about wet plate is the mistakes, the scratches on the plate. Some people are perfectionists. For me, I love the grime of the plates.
PM: You have a series of photographs in this year’s NYC Pride Guide called Extraordinary. Can you tell me about that?
NC: New York Pride came to me. They saw my black-and-white work and wanted me to do a series for the Pride Guide. They had me photograph nine transgender men and women. It’s been such an honor and a privilege to photograph these people.
My favorite person to shoot was a woman who grew up in New York City and has identified as trans since she was 13. She was in New York during the Stonewall riots. She was there for the birth of our gay-rights movement. I spent a couple hours with her, and the stories she told me were incredible.
All of the sudden my work was about grey gender and transgender. I’m doing so much work with the current gender movement! Pride Guide is my biggest success. I’m honored, as a gay man, to be asked. The trans community are our last brothers and sisters to get their rights. I’m hoping, in my way, I’m helping make that happen.
PM: Could you tell me more about that?
NC: Our society loves to label and box things. For a long time society boxed in gay society. If we were gay, we were supposed to be feminine, a sissy. If we were gay, we were supposed to be butch. It served a purpose. When we started this movement, it’s easier when people thought they understood us. If they were given a bunch of genderqueer people, middle America would have no way to relate.
With this work I want to break labels and break boxes. There’s a moment I have with the people I photograph, and I really want to show who they really are.
You can learn more about Contrera at his website, nicholascontrera.com, or on Instagram @nicholascontrera.
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
PREVIEW: Pride East party in London, supported by Smirnoff
PREVIEW: Pride East party in London, supported by Smirnoff
Look out for BB Diamond, RoxXxan, Holla!, Mint and Pitch Slap
jamiet
www.gaystarnews.com/article/preview-pride-east-party-london-supported-smirnoff110615
80-Year-Old Woman Gets Fresh With Go-Go Boy At Honolulu Pride After Party
80-Year-Old Woman Gets Fresh With Go-Go Boy At Honolulu Pride After Party
Over 500 people gathered at Bacchus Waikiki in Honolulu last weekend for Splashdown, the official Honolulu Pride after party, including an 80-something-year-old Hawaiian woman who got a little fresh with a go-go boy in broad daylight.
DJ Vaughn, who moved from Germany to Hawaii last year, was one of three disc jockeys spinning records at the party. Though he doesn’t know the woman’s name, he sees her around town every now and then.
“She sells handmade leis,” he tells Queerty in an email. “She is ususally seen at night in all the LGBT locations with her basket full of leis selling them to the customers. She enjoys being surrounded by the LGBT community.”
Vaughn describes the woman as “very quiet” though she does enjoy an “occasional dance move” when the mood strikes her.
Well, last Sunday the mood struck her in a big way. While everyone was getting down on Bacchus Waikiki’s outdoor patio/dance floor, the woman wandered in off the street. She shimmied over to a nearby go-go boy then tucked a dollar bill into his yellow short shorts.
Naturally, the crowd went wild, waving, cheering and offering high fives to the woman, who looked awfully proud of herself.
Seriously, we want this woman’s autograph.
DJ Vaughn caught the whole thing on camera. Scroll down for the amazing photos. And see more pictures of Honolulu Pride over at GayCities…
Photo credit: DJ Vaughn
Graham Gremore
Colombia Will Now Allow You to Change Your Gender Without Surgery or Psychiatric Opinion
Colombia Will Now Allow You to Change Your Gender Without Surgery or Psychiatric Opinion
Ten transgender Colombians have been granted new ID documents without the need to prove having undergone gender reassignment surgery or psychological evaluations, reports Americas Quarterly.
Individuals are now required to submit a copy of their civil registry form, a copy of the identification card and a sworn declaration expressing their wish to change their gender identity. Subsequent changes to an applicant’s gender identity can only be made after ten years.
Additionally, an individual can only change his or her gender identity twice. Openly lesbian congresswoman Angélica Lozano (right) tweeted photos of the celebrations outside the notary building and said people were shouting “My gender, my name.”
El Notario explica el trámite y felicita a cada solicitante. Acaban con aplauso y alguien grita: ¡IMPARABLE! pic.twitter.com/ur9WngDLoJ
— Angélica Lozano (@AngelicaLozanoC) June 9, 2015
Minister for Justice Yesid Reyes said:
“Judges used to order bodily inspections to determine if people had physically changed their sex, or demanded a psychiatric exam to know if the applicant had gender dysphoria. Both exams were profoundly invasive of privacy rights and were rooted in unacceptable prejudice. The construction of sexual and gender identity is an issue that doesn’t depend on biology.”
Colombia: Justice Ministry tweets info on how transgender individuals can apply for a change of name & gender on ID. pic.twitter.com/4Pm6W9fuiM — Andrés Duque (@Blabbeando) June 9, 2015
Jim Redmond
www.towleroad.com/2015/06/colombia-strikes-transgender-psychiatric-report-requirement.html
